Murat: "Impossible to stop building in North Cyprus"
Cyprus Times
August 11, 2005
The Minister of Interior Ozkan Murat has said that it is impossible to halt the building and construction work on former Greek Cypriot immovables in North Cyprus. “We won’t act according to the wishes and feelings of Greek Cypriots,” he said, in an interview with the Anatolian News Agency.
In the interview, TRNC Minister of Interior said that all signs are that “Greek Cypriots still appear to believe that Cyprus belongs to them.” He made it clear however that “the Turkish Cypriot people will not be pondering on what the Greek Cypriots will think or feel about, on how they will live and act in the future.”
Pointing to the increased building activity seen after the emergence of the Annan plan as a basis for a solution to the Cyprus problem, Mr Ozkan Murat said the “building sector has now become the locomotive of North Cyprus economy.”
“The foreigners’ buying of immovables in North Cyprus has greatly contributed to the general economy, and I don’t think this may, in any way, have an adverse effect on the efforts aimed at resolving the Cyprus problem,” he said confidently, in reply to another question.
As for reports that the Greek Cypriot administration has asked for a halt on building activity on former Greek Cypriot properties in the North, the TRNC Minister of Interior responded by saying: “The Greek Cypriots have many demands indeed; one of them being the claim that the island belongs to them and that only they can administer and rule over it.”
“These feelings of Greek Cypriots are definitely not binding on us, and we’re definitely not going to act according to what they feel and what they think about our actions,” he said.
However, the Minister of Interior acknowledged that the “property” issue will – inevitably - come to the negotiating table if-and-when a settlement aimed at solving the Cyprus problem is reached. |
